Sometimes you’re better off packing it in and walking away from an account, even a free one, when things just aren’t working anymore. That’s the conclusion that Josh’s octogenarian neighbor came to regarding her AOL account. AOL, when you aren’t even holding on to the senior citizen market, that’s a bad sign. [More]

Reader David wants to close his Bank of America account and move on. He was in no hurry: he began the process last spring, and slowly moved regular payments over to an account at a local bank and stopped making deposits in his Bank of America account. He wanted to bring his relationship with the bank to a graceful, amicable close. BoA isn’t interested in an amicable breakup, though. This account simply refuses to close. [More]

Tanya’s sister Tina died in a motorcycle accident this past summer. It’s hard enough to deal with the untimely death of a young person, but Tina’s emergency care after the accident left huge medical bills for her estate to take care of. And there’s one irritating thing left that her family can’t make go away: T-Mobile won’t close her mobile phone account, even after receiving the death certificate.

There is no such thing as a free trial. Well, sometimes there is, but be wary of any “free” trial that requires you to hand over your credit card or banking information. Craig’s wife signed up to try the local Gold’s Gym, then decided not to do business with them and end the trial before she ever broke a sweat.

Mavfan has a very old Hotmail account. It’s positively ancient in Internet years, existing since 2001. He was happy to just let the account forward to his wife’s Gmail address until it was hacked and began to send dirty spam messages to everyone the couple has ever e-mailed since 2001. It was time to put a stop to that nonsense, so he set out to shut down the account. Hotmail just won’t let him go.

Aaron is ditching Wells Fargo. Not out of any animosity toward megabanks or dissatisfaction with their policies, though. He’s just moving to an area where they don’t have any branches. He did what you do when breaking up with a bank: withdrew his money and closed out the account. Well, he tried to. He wanted to. Perhaps he did. But the employee who helped him couldn’t guarantee that a stray old check or a recurring charge he failed to change over wouldn’t bring the closed account back to life, resulting in overdraft charges and a zombie account lumbering around.

There happens to be a Gold’s Gym right inside the building where Cynthia works. How convenient! She took her employer up on an offer to subsidize part of her membership, and was happy with the arrangement. Three months later, the building Gold’s announced that it was closing. Not to worry, though: Memberships limited to only that location would change so members could visit any local corporate-owned Gold’s club. That’s pretty standard when a branch of a chain gyms closes, but Cynthia is annoyed that she joined so close to the change and has to pay for a membership she’s unlikely to use. Someone must have known that branch was doomed, but would the front-line and sales employees have known?

Scott wanted to cancel his service with eFax. Simple enough. The site told him that this must be done via webchat. But the chat doesn’t work, so he called them on the phone. The phone line told him that he needs to try the web site. And so on…

John tells Consumerist that he is having a baffling problem with Gamefly. He can’t cancel his son’s account online, but customer service is unreachable. The company keeps sending games that he doesn’t want and charging his card. What’s wrong here? Update: the account has now been closed.

Say you’ve got a credit card you don’t want for whatever reason and have decided to cancel it. Here are some simple steps you can take to make sure the card a) really gets canceled b) it doesn’t harm your credit score.

Jim wants his AOL e-mail account to go away. It’s a free account, so billing isn’t an issue–he just wants it closed. This seems like a relatively straightforward request to anyone except AOL. He writes that the company somehow makes it impossible to cancel a free account.

Reader Nathan’s wife unfortunately fell for a “Free Credit Report” offer from a TransUnion service called “Zendough.” They say they are being repeatedly billed even after they cancel, and the only customer service contact number they have is staffed by people who can’t help.

Look, Comcast, when you take back someone’s equipment and give them a receipt confirming that their account has no balance, it’s not unreasonable for them to think that their account is canceled. Don’t keep billing them for service and equipment rentals, and don’t tell them that you “can keep [the account] active and [bill] indefinitely until [you] decide to disconnect it.” Because if you do, they’re going to call their state Attorney General’s office. At least that’s how Paul convinced Comcast to finally cancel his account.

Gold’s Gym in Oxnard, California won’t stop billing Molly’s brother for membership, even though both he and his mother have repeatedly sent the gym copies of his deployment orders to Afghanistan. Two months later, the gym claims that it has “misplaced” the deployment orders, and is still billing for services Molly’s brother can’t use.